Born in 1941 – Krzysztof Kieślowski, Polish director and screenwriter.

“You make films to give people something, to transport them somewhere else, and it doesn’t matter if you transport them to a world of intuition or a world of intellect…The realm of superstitions, fortune-telling, presentiments, intuition, dreams, all this is the inner life of a human being, and all this is the hardest thing to film… I’ve been trying to get there from the beginning. I’m somebody who doesn’t know, somebody who’s searching.”

Born in 1903 – George Orwell, British novelist, essayist, and critic

“No one believes more firmly than Comrade Napoleon that all animals are equal. He would be only too happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves. But sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we be?”
― from Orwell’s 1945 novel, Animal Farm

Born in 1889 – Anna Akhmatova, Ukrainian-Russian poet and author.

“I am in the middle of it: chaos and poetry; poetry and love and again, complete chaos. Pain, disorder, occasional clarity; and at the bottom of it all: only love; poetry.

Sheer enchantment, fear, humiliation. It all comes with love.”

Read Lot’s Wife

Born in 1940 – Abbas Kiarostami, Iranian director, producer, and screenwriter.

Above: Still image from Kiarostami’s 1999 film, The Wind Will Carry Us.

Born in 1834 – Charles Spurgeon, English pastor and author.

“Although I commune at the Lord’s table with men of all creeds, yet with a slave-holder I have no fellowship of any sort or kind. Whenever [a slave-holder] has called upon me, I have considered it my duty to express my detestation of his wickedness, and I would as soon think of receiving a murderer into my church . . . as a man stealer.”

Born in 1932 – Andrei Tarkovsky, Russian film director and producer.

Above: A still from Tarkovsky’s film 1979 film, Stalker.

Tarkovsky: “The allotted function of art is not, as is often assumed, to put across ideas, to propagate thoughts, to serve as an example. The aim of art is to prepare a person for death, to plough and harrow his soul, rendering it capable of turning to good.”

It’s the Feast of the Annunciation.

Image: The Annunciation, Henry Ossawa Tanner (1898)

“The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee.”